this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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United States | News & Politics

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[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 26 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Since 2010, they’ve raked in a combined $9 trillion in revenue, netting more than $371 billion in profits

When they phrase it that way the insurance companies actually look better than they're commonly marked for. If I'm putting the right number of 0s in a calculator that's a profit rate of 4.12% which is a heck of a lot less than places like the retailers where they can afford to have a half off sale.

What we could really use is breakout of the 'above bottom line' expenditures to see who takes what from each $ put in.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The metric you need is what percent of revenue was used to pay doctors and hostpitals vs how much was wasted on “buisiness expenses”

Profit is just the leftovers that they couldnt figure out how to spend before tax time

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pretty well what I said with regards to the above bottom line. I know someone has put out some nice pie chart at some point to say what % of your premium dollar goes to what, will have to try and track one down.

Several years ago, a BadgerCare (the State of Wisconsin's Medicaid program) administrator told me once that the program has less than 3% administrative overhead. That means that out of every dollar spent on the program, $0.97 goes to pay for Wisconsin residents' medical care. He said that private insurance companies have something closer to 30% administrative overhead. I have no idea what it is now.

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